38

Brady does know her. He does.

At first he can’t get it, it’s like a word that’s stuck on the tip of your tongue. Then, as the band starts some song about making love on the dancefloor, it comes to him. The house on Teaberry Lane, the one where Hodges’s pet boy lives with his family, a nest of niggers with white names. Except for the dog, that is. He’s named O’dell, a nigger name for sure, and Brady meant to kill him … only he ended up killing his mother instead.

Brady remembers the day the niggerboy came running to the Mr Tastey truck, his ankles still green from cutting the fat ex-cop’s lawn. And his sister shouting, Get me a chocolate! Pleeeease?

The sister’s name is Barbara, and that’s her, big as life and twice as ugly. She’s sitting two rows up to the right with her friends and a woman who has to be her mother. Jerome isn’t with them, and Brady is savagely glad. Let Jerome live, that’s fine.

But without his sister.

Or his mother.

Let him see what that feels like.

Still looking at Barbara Robinson, his finger creeps beneath Frankie’s picture and finds Thing Two’s toggle-switch. He caresses it through the thin fabric of the tee-shirt the way he was allowed – on a few fortunate occasions only – to caress his mother’s nipples. Onstage, the lead singer of ’Round Here does a split that must just about crush his balls (always supposing he has any) in those tight jeans he’s wearing, then springs to his feet and approaches the edge of the stage. Chicks scream. Chicks reach out as if to touch him, their hands waving, their fingernails – painted in every girlish color of the rainbow – gleaming in the footlights.

‘Hey, do you guys like an amusement park?’ Cam hollers.

They scream that they do.

‘Do you guys like a carnival?’

They scream that they love a carnival.

‘Have you ever been kissed on the midway?’

The screams are utterly delirious now. The audience is on its feet again, the roving spotlights once more skimming over the crowd. Brady can no longer see the band, but it doesn’t matter. He already knows what’s coming, because he was there at the load-in.

Lowering his voice to an intimate, amplified murmur, Cam Knowles says, ‘Well, you’re gonna get that kiss tonight.’

Carnival music starts up – a Korg synthesizer set to play a calliope tune. The stage is suddenly bathed in a swirl of light: orange, blue, red, green, yellow. There’s a gasp of amazement as the midway set starts to descend. Both the carousel and the Ferris wheel are already turning.

‘THIS IS THE TITLE TRACK OF OUR NEW ALBUM, AND WE REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!’ Cam bellows, and the other instruments fall in around the synth.

‘The desert cries in all directions,’ Cam Knowles intones. ‘Like eternity, you’re my infection.’ To Brady he sounds like Jim Morrison after a prefrontal lobotomy. Then he yells jubilantly: ‘What’ll cure me, guys?’

The audience knows, and roars out the words as the band kicks in full-force.

‘BABY, BABY, YOU’VE GOT THE LOVE THAT I NEED … YOU AND I, WE GOT IT BAD … LIKE NOTHIN’ THAT I EVER HAD …’

Brady smiles. It is the beatific smile of a troubled man who at long last finds himself at peace. He glances down at the yellow glow of the ready-lamp, wondering if he will live long enough to see it turn green. Then he looks back at the niggergirl, who is on her feet, clapping and shaking her tail.

Look at me, he thinks. Look at me, Barbara. I want to be the last thing you ever see.

39

Barbara takes her eyes from the wonders onstage long enough to see if the bald man in the wheelchair is having as much fun as she is. He has become, for reasons she doesn’t understand, her man in the wheelchair. Is it because he reminds her of someone? Surely that can’t be, can it? The only crippled person she knows is Dustin Stevens at school, and he’s just a little second-grader. Still, there’s something familiar about the crippled bald man.

This whole evening has been like a dream, and what she sees now also seems dreamlike. At first she thinks the man in the wheelchair is waving to her, but that’s not it. He’s smiling … and he’s giving her the finger. At first she can’t believe it, but that’s it, all right.

There’s a woman approaching him, climbing the aisle stairs two by two, going so fast she’s almost running. And behind her, almost on her heels … maybe all this really is a dream, because it looks like …

‘Jerome?’ Barbara tugs Tanya’s sleeve to draw her attention away from the stage. ‘Mom, is that …’

Then everything happens.

40

Holly’s initial thought is that Jerome could have gone first after all, because the bald and bespectacled man in the wheelchair isn’t – for the moment, at least – even looking at the stage. He’s turned away and staring at someone in the center section, and it appears to her that the vile son of a bitch is actually flipping that someone the bird. But it’s too late to change places with Jerome, even though he’s the one with the revolver. The man’s got his hand beneath the framed picture in his lap and she’s terribly afraid that means he’s ready to do it. If so, there are only seconds left.

At least he’s on the aisle, she thinks.

She has no plan, the extent of Holly’s planning usually goes no further than what snack she might prepare to go with her evening movie, but for once her troubled mind is clear, and when she reaches the man they’re looking for, the words that come out of her mouth seem exactly right. Divinely right. She has to bend down and shout to be heard over the driving, amplified beat of the band and the delirious shrieks of the girls in the audience.

‘Mike? Mike Sturdevant, is that you?’

Brady turns from his contemplation of Barbara Robinson, startled, and as he does, Holly swings the knotted sock Bill Hodges has given her – his Happy Slapper – with adrenaline-loaded strength. It flies a short hard arc and connects with Brady’s bald head just above the temple. She can’t hear the sound it makes over the combined cacophony of the band and the fans, but she sees a section of skull the size of a small teacup cave in. His hands fly up, the one that was hidden knocking Frankie’s picture to the floor, where the glass shatters. His eyes are sort of looking at her, except now they’re rolled up in their sockets so that only the bottom halves of the irises show.

Next to Brady, the girl with the stick-thin legs is staring at Holly, shocked. So is Barbara Robinson. No one else is paying any attention. They’re on their feet, clapping and swaying and singing along.

‘I WANT TO LOVE YOU MY WAY … WE’LL DRIVE THE BEACHSIDE HIGHWAY …’

Brady’s mouth is opening and closing like the mouth of a fish that has just been pulled from a river.

‘IT’S GONNA BE A NEW DAY … I’LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!’

Jerome lays a hand on Holly’s shoulder and shouts to be heard. ‘Holly! What’s he got under his shirt?’

She hears him – he’s so close she can feel his breath puff against her cheek with each word – but it’s like one of those radio transmissions that come wavering in late at night, some DJ or gospel-shouter halfway across the country.

‘Here’s a little present from Jibba-Jibba, Mike,’ she says, and hits him again in exactly the same place, only even harder, deepening the divot in his skull. The thin skin splits and the blood comes, first in beads and then in a freshet, pouring down his neck to color the top of his blue ’Round Here tee-shirt a muddy purple. This time Brady’s head snaps all the way over onto his right shoulder and he begins to shiver and shuffle his feet. She thinks, Like a dog dreaming about chasing rabbits.

Before Holly can hit him again – and she really really wants to – Jerome grabs her and spins her around. ‘He’s out, Holly! He’s out! What are you doing?’